Responding to God's challenge to get out of the boat and start walking on water!

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Time, Talk and Trust

This morning I was introduced to Rick Warren’s three “T”s
in developing intimacy with God – Time, Talk and Trust.

It seems to me that they can apply to any relationship,
not just the God one. The opposite truth is also relevant – to create distance
all that is required is a lack of time, a lack of talk and a lack of
trust.All relationships need to be fed
and nurtured.

Let’s start with time. This last week has been spent with
my friend Marion in her house in Armadale, the south end of the Isle of Skye.
The house is amazing.It’s not a new
build but an old house.It smells not of
new paint but old dust.Piles of books
inhabit every room. Stacked against every wall there are pictures in
frames.Nothing gets thrown out and
everything is waiting to be assigned a place somewhere.

I have this habit of assuming that because I like someone’s
company for an hour or two in a specific context, I will like that person’s company
for a longer period outside the context of our usual meeting. It doesn’t often work that way.We discover quickly that we have little
common ground and things become awkward after a while. It has sometimes led to
the end of a friendship. So, yes, spending a whole week with someone I spend a
couple of hours with once a month qualified for the
bitten-off-more-than-I-can-chew label.

I arrived at her house a little after two in the
afternoon.It was a slow drive – made stressful
by the incredible beauty of the landscape and hairpin bends, other drivers
overtaking and being midgie-attacked-and-bitten when I stopped for a picnic
just outside of Kyle of Lochalsh.It was
more than anyone could ask of me to negotiate the curved drive without hitting
the white stones that bordered it.

So, we sat down to a cup of tea at two o’clock and talked
our way almost all the way around the clock face. We woke from a deep and
involved conversation to realise it was way past our bed times.

Marion’s house has no television, no radio and no mobile
phone or wifi signal.It has field mice
that sit on the kitchen floor undisturbed and a family of ducks that pass by
the back door on the way to the bay for a morning swim. It has two rooms
decorated in 1950’s style, the living room and the kitchen, which form a film
set for Aunty Peggy’s house in the ALABA series “Bannan”. The film crew arrive,
like migrating birds, in the spring and the autumn.

I discovered that I loved being in Marion’s house and in
her company. We spent a lot of time together!

What about talking? Marion is writing a book on Scottish
clans.She began telling me about some
new houses that had been built just across the road.They are not like Marion’s house which has
character and history and two rooms of a film set. These are neat white boxes with
green wooden porches. Apparently when the diggers came in to pull up the soil,
it was more than soil they excavated.Archaeologists were no doubt called in to examine and date the bones
found – three or four thousand years old - and identify the black ooze in stone
jars – brain matter – but once they were all moved to a safer place the
builders continued with their project.History was an inconvenience.No
clues left as to who the bones belonged to and seemingly no desire to find out.Too many aspects of life are in the same kind
of danger of being neglected and forgotten.Living in a place where MacLean and MacGregor are becoming just surnames
and losing their history – Marion stands like King Canute trying to halt the
waves of “who-gives-a toss?”

The lesser known stories of clan events, along with
snippets of Marion’s life story and grilling me on my views about God TV and
American evangelists, there was no shortage of things to talk about.

Marion had worked with a publisher friend of mine, but he
hadn’t met someone like Marion before.Her synapses are always firing and she probably can’t write in a
straight line.We called her diversions “rabbit
holes” and there were lots of them.I remember
once being taught how to roll out pastry by continually tapping the edges to
keep it square or round.Marion needed
the tap the edges of her creativity to keep it in shape.

So much talking. When Marion is staying in Armadale, she
tends not to leave the grounds. She said
it was because people talk to her and hours can drift by.It’s not wasted time by any means but it
doesn’t help progress the book.

And trust? Writers are strange people at times.There are times when they lack confidence and
are not sure that what they are writing has any value to anyone but themselves.My publisher friend was looking for a
particular book format that he recognised. It was as if he tried to snatch the
pastry out of her hand and start tapping the edges into his kind of book.

Much of the time Marion and I spent talking was about
finding a format and a structure that she was happy with.It was as if she had put the pastry into my
hands – her hopes, her dreams, her stories, her personal anecdotes and all of her
confidence issues.We worked together
shaping her book, identifying themes and stories that would make the grade and
setting aside the ones that wouldn’t. It will be such a book that I will be
first in the queue to buy.

I found plenty of time to sit down and plan a second book
of poetry.It has been something I have
hesitated to do because the first one was so good that I didn’t think a second
book could match it.But, as the first
book was, it was never my book to make such decisions about, but God’s.I know that I had Marion’s support anyway,
but talking to her it really helped.

The three “T”s?Marion and I did them all and our friendship is deeper for it.

1 comment:

Good read Mel .as the years are passing I am beginning to realise that time is peicous it canot be bought ,my daughter is 10 years old tomorrow she is changing and now is teaching me about my self my strange habits and customs, ,she is a gift from God and there will be a day when she will fly away, so it is good to take time to talk and share who we are and what God has done. Nick